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The above comments should have given you a good feel for flag trader. The other system i eluded to is not stocks its forex, It is a great compliment to flag trader and my trading portfolio. Its an intra day system that really does rattle out pips on a daily basis. If it is going to be expanded to others i will let you know as its fantastic.
Regards
Paul Chalmers

Junior member

Thnaks Paul, sorry too for delay- i am also trying Fx , so if you can i'd really appreciate it if you could share the forex system that seems to be working..(i have bought Flad tarder and am in process of watching the last videos (actually i am new to stocks, rather than FX , which i have been playing with so far not successfully for some time.. i too really need to create an income out of trading
Thanks
Duncan

The above comments should have given you a good feel for flag trader. The other system i eluded to is not stocks its forex, It is a great compliment to flag trader and my trading portfolio. Its an intra day system that really does rattle out pips on a daily basis. If it is going to be expanded to others i will let you know as its fantastic.
Regards
Paul Chalmers

Junior member

Junior member

i wonder if there is anyone in Uk who is using flag trader who could recommend... or advise, on how to move data of flagging stocks found on flagfinder to a charting platform such as sharescope so that one can track UK stocks, or is it necessary to use only US stocks with the telechart 2000 service that Guy recommends - since he shows one how to mode the data across to there ?
thanks
duncmac

Junior member

You can do it in the same way. When you have saved the txt file you can import to your folio in Sharescope by choosing File>Import>Import share list. If you want to create a new portfolio from the list choose Portfolio>Create portfolio from list.

Junior member

I haven't been on here for quite a while, trying to find my last post, think it was June/July 2009!! Well I have been tied up, I started a new job round about then and this entailed working away during the week so between my existing "hobbies", rest, reading and travelling I had to put flagT on the back burner. The job was a real step up the ladder so I wanted to put all my effort into getting established and learning the ropes etc. I now seem to be settling in and making a real impact.

So as i've been out of the mix with FT I need to get myself refreshed with the main principles and also look at this ovi thing. Now and then I did pop in to FT site and see what Guy was saying about the markets etc.

I have been viewing through the posts in a sort of fragmented fashion and picked up something about a forum, is that up and running yet? Sorry about the questions but just assume i've been in a coma for 8 months!!

So I look forward to getting back into the trading mix in the next few weeks/months.

Junior member

Glad to hear that your new position is going strong. Long may that last!

I spoke to Guy just before Christmas about the 'forum'; he said it's still coming, but his people running the sites were very busy on the OVI. Now the options designations have changed they are busy with that too.

If you review his recent webinars there are some small adjustments to make to the basic FT strategy in view of current market conditions. I can't comment with any authority as I'm also just coming out of a study / revision stage and am taking first tentative steps in the markets (again). That said, FT has kept me out of making a fool of myself and I'm still in that happy profit area. If you are in the PTC the webinar yesterday (25/02/10) was pretty illuminating.

The OVI seems very promising, I won't consider anything at the moment unless it's going in my favour (and backing up my FT selections and the other FT parameters) for each and every trade. Time will tell!

I haven't been on here for quite a while, trying to find my last post, think it was June/July 2009!! Well I have been tied up, I started a new job round about then and this entailed working away during the week so between my existing "hobbies", rest, reading and travelling I had to put flagT on the back burner. The job was a real step up the ladder so I wanted to put all my effort into getting established and learning the ropes etc. I now seem to be settling in and making a real impact.

So as i've been out of the mix with FT I need to get myself refreshed with the main principles and also look at this ovi thing. Now and then I did pop in to FT site and see what Guy was saying about the markets etc.

I have been viewing through the posts in a sort of fragmented fashion and picked up something about a forum, is that up and running yet? Sorry about the questions but just assume i've been in a coma for 8 months!!

So I look forward to getting back into the trading mix in the next few weeks/months.

Junior member

Having told you what I do, I'm now finding that Sharescope sometimes complains about the format of the txt file (but not always), and I can't fix it. Bizarre. I'll let you know if I find a total solution. I think it might be something to do with the designation of the stock, ie ABC or ABC.L, or more specifically AB or AB.L

You can do it in the same way. When you have saved the txt file you can import to your folio in Sharescope by choosing File>Import>Import share list. If you want to create a new portfolio from the list choose Portfolio>Create portfolio from list.

Newbie

I purchased Flag Trader back in October 2008. Due to the massive wild swings the markets were making at that time (the Dow was having days where 700 pip swings were not uncommon), with Guy recommending staying out at that time, I decided to return the course and wait for everything to settle down and maybe try it again. I would have liked to have seen some return on the investment, I guess I just bought at the wrong time, which is why I returned it.

I was impressed with the course as a whole, and spoke to Guy on the phone at the time and found him a very genuine fella.

How have the guys who have been using it for a long period of time been doing with it? Are you all consistently making the gains that was reported on his site by his students in 2008 and onwards?

Junior member

Forgive me if I don't remember you by our phone call - this message just appeared in my inbox so I thought I'd have a try at replying parts of it for you.

Any EOD trading method is going to have its quiet times as well as its busy times. That can make it tricky in terms of buying a system like Flag-Trader because if the patterns aren't showing when you first subscribe, frustration can understandably kick in.

However, that's part of the beauty of trading breakouts like this. The market tells you when it's hot and when it's not, and that in turn protects you in choppy whipsawy times. Sure, it can require some patience, but any trader will tell you that, much like hunting, a vast percentage of trading time is "stalking one's prey", and the big profits come in spurts. My successful students have got that nailed and that's why they'll have absurd returns very quickly, followed by periods of inertia. With intraday trading the same thing occurs but in a more condensed time frame which satisfies the more trade-hungry folks.

Now, I realize that many EOD folks are trade-hungry and I've had my own frustrations too. To that end, I wanted to include S&R breakouts (from non flag patterns) to my repertoire but with added safety. That's now happened.

One of my strengths in this field is the deep options knowledge I've gained over the years and the data I've been collecting.

For many years I've been seeing transaction patterns in the options markets that can often reveal a high probability of what's going to happen next, provided it's dovetailed with a tradeable chart pattern. You must have a chart pattern present (like a flag or channel) because you need to distinguish between likely hedging or position accumulation prior to the expected breakout.

From all this data, last year I developed an indicator (the OVI) that measures the options trading activity of stocks and displays the information as a simple line - it works best with highly liquid stocks (and ETFs) with highly liquid options. There are literally 100s of millions of rows of data that are analyzed every night, and some of the best signals have revealed the cheaters in the markets positioning themselves before a significant breakout. If you check my blogs, you'll see a pretty impressive record of calling the market, and there's no secret that the OVI-Pattern combination has contributed massively to this.

Make no mistake, cheating DOES go on in the markets but in the options markets it requires expertise and massive amounts of data to spot it, so those who cheat there tend to get away with it. You should realize also that many "sophisticated" traders will gravitate to options partly because of this, and they know how to play the game.

Ok, so what does this mean? Well, combining the OVI with flags and channels for liquid stocks (with liquid options) has been a revelation for those folks who have that application. We're going to deploy it onto Flag-Trader hopefully by the end of the year, together with OVI scans which are already on my TradeTheBanks application, which covers around 1,000 stocks.

Forgive some of the marketing (over which I have little input and wish we didn't have to do, but the software development business isn't cheap!) but if you want to learn more, take a look at some of my blogs on www.tradethebanks.com. And for my market calls, look at www.flag-trader.com in the Blogs section. We're going to consolidate everything pretty soon, and as promised, deliver the forum (later than hoped but it is a commitment).

Talking of software development, it's a perfectly reasonable question to ask, why not just trade 100% of the time, rather than have a software business. Well there a two answers to that. The software side, and being answerable to customers, is the catalyst that has led to the massive improvements in my trading arsenal.

For example, the OVI started as an image in my mind because of all the options chains I was regularly surveying. When students asked me how I could make consistently good calls in the market I explained that it was partly the patterns and partly the options activity. Looking at an options chain is like looking at the Matrix - numbers everywhere - though I knew what to look for and where to look. Then it occurred to me that in my mind it was a bit like a line going up and down ... so from there I thought, well, how about we create that line for real so we can all see it - it would save me a lot of time and be useful for all of us.

Well, from there even my eyes were opened, and I now have interest from hedge funds to develop it further. But its origins lay in the premise that my students were asking me to explain something that was very difficult to explain, and hence I had to find an easy, more visual way to explain it to them. The result is that we all benefit.

The second answer to the question is that trading exclusively can be a lonely business and I didn't like what it was turning me into, even though that was the time where I made my biggest returns.

Ok, this has turned into a tome - the coffee they served me this morning definitely wasn't decaf and I've been on the ceiling ever since!

Anyway, I hope this helps. If anyone's interested I'm going to open up the Private Traders Club again soon - it's a cheap way of getting to know my methods. I'd say one of the main benefits will be that you'll acquire a very sharp intuition and feel for the markets. That's a real gift in itself, even if you use it with a totally different strategy to mine.

Junior member

We are adding to our range of technology that sniffs out the "in-the-know" trading activity.

The OVI is already a significant tool which we may now be able to improve significantly in the coming weeks.

Added to that, we're also going to release a volume tool that scours the market for unusual/abnormal volume patterns both daily and intraday. This has been a significant weapon for the likes of Bill O'Neil and other highly successful breakout traders over the years.

Furthermore, we may have found a way of improving our knowledge of buy/sell options activity.

Believe me when I say that in trading, the tail wags the dog. In other words, the options markets will often lead the stock market. This was first highlighted in the 1987 crash, but more recent university studies have confirmed this as well. Sure, the markets are more efficient now than they were in the late 1980s/early 1990s, but the quick, smart and big money still finds a highly lucrative sanctuary in the options markets.

Studies showed that ANNUAL returns of over 60% were achieved in a 12 year study period (compared with 12% for the general stock market in the same period). This was achieved by measuring unavailable options trading data where the quants were granted access to specific buying and selling options volumes. By that measure, they constructed a portfolio of buying the 20 most bullish stocks (according to buying and selling options volume) and shorting the 20 most bearish by the same measure. The portfolio was adjusted weekly according the ratios alone.

The trick in all this is (a) having the data in the first place and (b) knowing exactly where to look. For the general investor this has been a pipe dream, but this is exactly what I've been honing in on, and want to make available.

It's also worth bearing in mind that the returns quoted above were for an institutional type portfolio with zero leverage. The portfolio was adjusted weekly due to the ratios, not the price activity of the stocks themselves. The private investor would therefore do much better because our adjustments would be made by price activity, and would not be constrained to an arbitrary weekly cut-off date. Furthermore, we could use leverage, even if it was conservatively done (say through Deep In the Money options).

So, I hope this is interesting to anyone who's reading.

The idea is that we're going to implant our new scans into Flag-Trader and relaunch it as a much more powerful tool than before. We've had a number of huge successes with Flag-Trader and I've not heard of any disasters - mainly because our trading plans don't allow for them.

But moving forward, we can be a lot more discerning about the flags we take and those we pass on.

Newbie

After exchanging a few emails with Guy, I decided to re-join Flag Trader, and within the first 2 weeks, I managed to find 8 good opportunities with the software, 1 of which lost, but the other 7 all hit the 1st profit target. Most of them are still running, one was stopped at BE on the second half. One of the trades currently has over 1700 points profit running, which is over 1:4.5 R:R, which is not bad by anyones standards.

It took literally 30 minutes a day to find the trades, and make sure they tick all the boxes on my checklist.

Trading like this is great when the markets are breaking out nicely and then trending, as these stocks have mainly done. Just look at ESI, shame they're not all like that one!

When I previously bought the system, I couldn't find many opportunities as the markets were swinging wildly, but to be fair, this is what Guy has said all along, and at the time he was telling me to be patient.

The key is that this way of trading keeps you safe (or out) when the markets are choppy.

This time around I was lucky to rejoin at a time when the markets are behaving nicely, and now I have a much better understanding as to how and why this approach can work.